Over on the NewCo site, I’ve profiled Typeform, a Barcelona-based NewCo. Below is a short outtake from that piece, if you’d like to read the entire thing, head on over to NewCo, which is publishing more and more pieces on innovative new kinds of companies around the world.
One of the best kinds of NewCos are those that are “hindsight obvious” – at first you don’t get what the big deal is, but after you spend a bit of time grokking the company’s story, it’s undeniable how much better their version of the world is than that which came before.
Such is the case with Typeform, a four-year old startup I came across during NewCo Barcelona earlier this fall. TypeForm’s co-founder and joint CEO David Okuniev spoke at the NewCoBCN kickoff event, and later came to San Francisco to visit our offices. His is a compelling NewCo narrative, the story of a bootstrapped company formed to scratch its founders’ itch, now scaling past 10,000 paying customers – all on the cloud-based SaaS model much beloved by Valley insiders. This narrative is so common in the Valley that what initially struck me about Typeform wasn’t its business model, it was its location. The company feels like a typical San Francisco Internet startup, but when you dig in, it’s unique.
First, the product. Typeform declares its mission in three simple words: “Make forms awesome.” Sounds pretty mundane, right? But once you get Okuniev talking about his company, you realize both how clever and compelling his company’s product really is. Typeform started when Okuniev and his partner Robert Muñoz, both designers, were working with a client who required a friendly user interface for an in-store promotional display. The task involved enticing customers to approach a Macintosh and interact without any prompting. Adding to the challenge and humor of the story, the client was a toilet company – not exactly the kind of product one readily discusses in a public setting. The partners created a friendly platform that elicited responses in a conversational interface, and the core of Typeform was born.
For the rest of the story, head to the NewCo site.
